Ethel Ernestine Harper (1903–1979) was an American performer. She is best known for her portrayal of the Aunt Jemima advertising character during the 1950s. She was also the final "living person" basis for the official Aunt Jemima image most commonly seen in print and on billboards before it was changed to a composite in the 1960s. She worked as a traveling "Aunt Jemima" on behalf of the Quaker Oats Company, giving presentations at schools, churches and other organizations.
Harper graduated from college when she was seventeen years old. She worked as a teacher. She also sang with the Three Ginger Snaps, and she appeared in the 1939 film The Hot Mikado with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. She took the role of Aunt Jemima during the 1940s. Harper died of a heart attack in 1979.
Famous quotes containing the words ethel and/or harper:
“The very “in” had babies the same time Ethel [Kennedy] did, in the same hospital, with the same obstetrician ...”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)
“Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)